he bright warm room
and the highly-coloured beast-book. But a walk with a real Man--why,
that was a treat in itself! We set off briskly, the Man in the middle. I
looked up at him and wondered whether I should ever live to smoke a big
pipe with that careless sort of majesty! But Charlotte, whose young mind
was not set on tobacco as a possible goal, made herself heard from the
other side.

"Now, then," she said, "tell us a story, please, won't you?"

The Man sighed heavily and looked about him. "I knew it," he groaned.
"I KNEW I should have to tell a story. Oh, why did I leave my pleasant
fireside? Well, I WILL tell you a story. Only let me think a minute."

So he thought a minute, and then he told us this story.

Long ago--might have been hundreds of years ago--in a cottage half-way
between this village and yonder shoulder of the Downs up there, a
shepherd lived with his wife and their little son. Now the shepherd
spent his days--and at certain times of the year his nights too--up on
the wide ocean-bosom of the Downs, with only the sun and the stars and
the sheep for company, and the friendly chattering world of men and
women far out of sight and hearing. But his little son, when he wasn't
helping his father, and often when he was as well, spent much of his
time buried in big volumes that he borrowed from the affable gentry and
interested parsons of the country round about. And his parents were very
fond of him, and rather proud of him too, though they didn't let on in
his hearing, so he was left to go his own way and read as much as he
liked; and instead of frequently getting a cuff on the side of the head,
as might very well have happened to him, he was treated more or less as
an equal by his parents, who sensibly thought it a very fair division
of labour that they should supply the practical knowledge, and he the
book-learning. They knew that book-learning often came in useful at
a pinch, in spite of what their neighbours said. What the Boy chiefly
dabbled in was natural history and fairy-tales, and he just took them as
they came, in a sandwichy sort of way, without making any distinctions;
and really his course of reading strikes one as rather sensible.

One evening the shepherd, who for some nights past had been disturbed
and preoccupied, and off his usual mental balance, came home all of
a tremble, and, sitting down at the table where his wife and son
were peacefully employed, she with her seam, he in followi